In my family one of the many traditions is that when a woman is expecting a baby someone does the "needle test" over her stomach to try and predict the baby. It is something fun and often correct in determining the sex (Hey, there's a 50/50 chance right?) and as far as I know it has been passed down from generations of women. There are dozens of pregnancy related wives tales for women about how you are carrying, what your crave, what you dream, ect and if you do a little online researching apparently it is the same for mares. I happened to be perusing a Facebook foaling group when I came across someone asking about the "nail test" for mares. As I read the comments I learned that old time horse breeders do something very similar with their mares to what my family does for humans. As the horse tale goes you are supposed to pull a long hair from the mare's tail and tie a nail to it so that the point end hangs down. You then hold this steady a couple of inches above the mares flank area. If it doesn't move she is not in foal, if it makes a circular motion she is having a filly, and if it moves in a straight line back and forth she is having a colt. For fun I had Taylor video me doing this test on Pebbles this morning. I will let you watch the video and see what happens. I will say this, for a control test we tried to hold it over all 3 of the geldings and it would not move at all! Since I don't have any non pregnant mares at my farm I could not test that way. Anyone want to test their mares and video to share with us? Both bred and non bred would be interesting to see!
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